(Bloomberg) -- The New South Wales government has been called on to conduct an urgent inquiry into the state’s water market in response to an investigation by Bloomberg News.

Greens Party legislator Cate Faehrmann made the call in a letter to Water Minister Rose Jackson, saying the Dec. 27 article raised “matters of poor water policy and practice” in the Murray-Darling Basin. 

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The story documented the economic, environmental and human cost of the commodification and excessive extraction of Australian water. It exposed a confidential agreement by water provider Murray Irrigation Ltd. to withhold more than a hundred billion liters of water from users at the height of New South Wales’s last drought, in 2019. 

Data analysis also showed that government-issued licenses to divert water from northern floodplains have allowed farmers to extract 37% more than authorities estimated was already being taken. Confidential documents showed that in some locations, irrigators have been allowed to extract nearly three times more floodplain water each year than the government’s initial estimates. 

In her letter, seen by Bloomberg News, Faehrmann described the data as “shocking.” The office of Minister Jackson, a Labor Party member, had no immediate comment.

Faehrmann, who is the Greens’ spokesperson for water in New South Wales, told the minister that several actions were “urgently required.” She called for an investigation into the water carried over by Murray Irrigation and how it went undetected by the government. She asked for a review into whether floodplain harvesting volumes are within legal limits and “a quantitative analysis of the costs and benefits, by area and industry, of the water market.”

Ron McCalman, Murray Irrigation’s chief executive officer, described the company’s water holdback as a confidential client matter when he was interviewed for the story last year.

He announced his resignation just days before the article was published and is due to step down in June. McCalman didn’t provide a reason for his decision at the time, but said in a phone interview on Tuesday his departure was unrelated to Bloomberg’s reporting as he wasn’t CEO of Murray Irrigation during the years in question.

--With assistance from Sybilla Gross.

(updates with comment from McCalman in final paragraph.)

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